


red band society ∙ fivesauce

by curvylouis



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Cancer, Hospital, Illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curvylouis/pseuds/curvylouis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>❝are we even happy?❞</p>
<p>and while hospitals aren't the ideal places to find happiness,<br/>you can always count on a surgery to push all the pain away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red band society ∙ fivesauce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cuddlesharry](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cuddlesharry).



         **THE SMELL OF MEDICINE**  is a common scent that devours any good smelling thing in the hospital. The promise of mortality overcomes the promise of living and those who are told that they have a short time to live use it to get closer to dying. That’s how it works when you’re given an expiration month; a month or less when every sliver of hope that might have been left was now tarnished in kemo or IV’s and more needles. The expenses are as inevitable as death itself and it hurts your slowly unbeating heart to see sorrow in the faces of the people you once would see everyday.

        Michael Clifford wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t ready to lose all his hair and become subject to tests. His family, friends, loved ones; they weren’t ready to lose the Michael that once played terribly for their soccer team and now see him playing with his breathing tubes. They weren’t ready. But no one really thought how Michael felt. Sure, he wasn’t ready, but it hurt his insides more to see people so upset that he would be leaving school and home than it did to actually find out that he was dying.

        His old school had a parade for him and all. Not many people knew Michael, but nonetheless loved him. They learned about him through the half and hour long talk they all had with their teachers about donating to help Michael. They raised money, but it wasn’t the money that his family wanted. They had insurance, money wasn’t a huge problem for them. It was the fact that their baby might die. And that was what was heartbreaking. By the third week of winter, Michael had learned the basics at Children’s Hospital.

        The nurses; they’re nice human beings with fucked up lives, but find happiness in treating those who have it worse—but a good happy, not a disturbing happy. The patients; some bitter, some happy, they were all somehow somewhat assholes. The doctors; they barely know what they’re talking about, so don’t mind them. And last but not least of the important people, the new people. The new people were treated exactly like new people; unnoticed until spoken to, expected to find their own way around, and not to break the rules they didn’t know about.

        It wasn’t until the first week of February that Michael was no longer the new kid. By then, his hair was shorter and he dyed his hair different colors in denial of all the baldness in the hospital, even though baldness was the plague of most of the hospital. Her name was Isabelle, a small girl with only about thirteen years of life in her. “And she has thirteen  _months_  left.” A nurse told Michael while they all ate in the cafeteria in the upstairs portion of the cancer center. “Poor girl, she had ambition.”

        “Well, you don’t  _lose_ ambition, you just lose hope.” The nurse was an older African American woman by the name of Jessie. Jessie was loved by most, if not, all patients. She had wisdom, but that wisdom was always tested by Michael. He insisted that there was something flawed in the seemingly happy Jessie, he just couldn’t yet find it. “What is she in for?”

        “You say in like it’s prison.”

        “Well, you only have a slight chance of getting out. This place is just a bit happier than prison, is all,” Michael bit into a sandwich.

        “I guess you’re right again. But no, she has stage four kidney cancer. The surgery; she’s not healthy enough for it and the odds of her dying from it are greater than living. She needs a friend, Michael.”

        Michael sighed and swallowed the bologna, “I’m  nearly five years older than she is. I don’t think she wants me for a friend.”

  
        “A friend is a friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you all like my first story on this site. thank you so much ♥


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